Beginning in the twentieth century, Muslim feminist scholars have started challenging culturally-derived attitudes that have shaped patriarchal societies in Muslim-majority countries.Their methodology, which undergirds Islamic Feminism, is to return to the Qur’anic text in order to retrieve what they believe to be the original egalitarian thrust of the central scripture of Islam. These women exegetes thereby offer critiques of traditional methodologies of engaging the Qur’an and provide “alternative” readings of verses that deal specifically with gendered relations, which will be the focus of this lecture.

Biography:

Asma Afsaruddin is Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures in the School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author and editor of seven books, including Contemporary Issues in Islam (Edinburgh University Press,2015); Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2013) which won a World Book Award from the Iranian government in 2015 and was a runner-up for the 2014 British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society Book Prize; and The First Muslims: History and Memory (OneWorld Publications 2008), which was recently translated into Turkish. Her research has been funded by grants from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, among others.—